A trip of a lifetime

We get up at 7:30am and have decided to visit Miyajima Island and also the A-bomb dome. We check emails and realise this hostel has the fastest internet ever, downloading at 4mb a second, it downloads a film in a couple of minutes and uploading photos is ridiculously fast as well. We plan to upload some photos and get some films later. Firstly we go to the station to book our ticket to Osaka for the afternoon. We book the train leaving at 4:15pm and then get the train to Miyajima station. The train takes 25 minutes and then we have a short walk to the ferry, which takes us to the island. Thankfully the ferry is also included in our rail pass, so we don’t have to pay. On the way to the ferry there are two guys trimming a tree as if it is a bonsai tree, which is quite funny. We jump on the ferry which takes about ten minutes to cross over to the island and have a look round. The island is full of very tame deer, that will just come up to you and let you touch them, obviously after food.

We visit the shrine, which shockingly is 300Y, After paying so little in other countries it’s a bit shocking and to be honest it was nowhere near as impressive as the other places we have gone, for much less money or even free.

Unfortunately the aquarium is being refurbished and is not open till August 2011, so we can’t visit that. We are about to just leave the island but decide to go and look at the ropeway, which is a gondola and see how much it is. It turns out to be 1800Y for a round trip, which is about £14. It’s really too much for us to spend, but we decide to do it anyway. There is two cables cars, going to the top and then a short uphill walk to Mt Misen. You can actually walk all the way up, but it is a two hour walk and we were not dressed appropriately and also did not have enough time. We visit the top and take some photos of the amazing views, although very hot and very hard work walking uphill.

We catch the cable car back down and the ferry and train back to Hiroshima station.

We are very short on time but want to visit the A-bomb dome, a ridiculous name, but had to be seen nonetheless. We get the tram from the station to the dome, which costs 150Y and have a look around the dome, which is one of the only original structures left and a sort of memorial. The dome was originally an exhibition hall and was almost directly underneath where the bomb detonated, which apparently was one of the reasons some of the structure stayed intact. We were really short of time, so could not visit the museum, but walked round the river, while a band was playing on the other side.

We caught the tram back to the train station and had to run to the hostel to grab our stuff and get back to the station in time for our train. This time we have made sure we book non smoking and the journey only takes one and a half hours. We arrive at the station and the hostel we had tried to book originally is full, we ring another one which is also full and finally decide to try one very close to the station on a map we have been given. We walk to the hostel which is a huge place on the top two floors of the KoKo plaza, it’s a very posh place and costs slightly more than we had paid before, at about £25 a night.